Air June 5 - 11, 2007

Time to Treat Brush in pastures

This is Ag Outlook 2007 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. If your pastures are like most pastures, there is some woody brush that needs to be controlled. Now, I'm not talking about the wildflowers that are out there - they really don't create enough competition with the grasses to be a problem, in fact many of those native forbs are legumes and add a great deal of value to the hay and the pasture. What I am talking about are buckbrush, sumac, dogwood and even the trees like elm and hackberry and especially the thorny ones like locust and hedge. We didn't burn a lot of pastures this year for various reasons and that has given us a nice window of opportunity to use some herbicide to control woody brush. You don't want to burn and spray brush in the same year - you just don't get good control with the herbicide when you do. But this year we have a nice set up to get some control initiated and June is the month to do that control. Once we get into July and August we once again don't seen near the level of control that an early June spraying gives. I do not like broadcast spraying of entire pastures, either by ground or air, because there are just too many plants of value that become victims of that. I prefer spot spraying with a ground rig and hand gun. We have a lot of good products available and many more that are coming on board in recent years. After too long of a time of not having many tools, things are starting to change. For the shrubby stuff I personally like the products that contain triclopyr such as Remedy, Crossbow and PastureGuard. But others will work too. The key is to mix with water only for these foliar treatments. This has been Ag Outlook 2007 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

What Wheat Data To Use

This is Ag Outlook 2007 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. Those of you who made it out to the wheat plots in late May had a chance to see some of the interesting developments coming along in wheat breeding. Let me just say that everything, including some of the new experimental lines, were getting hit with leaf diseases. But there were some big differences in what we were seeing. Jagger and Jagalene were getting hammered by diseases. It's a good thing they can fill from the stem, because they are going to have to!! What I found most interesting was that the number one leaf disease in this area this year, appears to be a bacterial infection. You probably aren't going to hear very much about that because it isn't very common, there aren't any sprays that will really work to prevent it and nobody routinely screens for it so most wheat breeders wouldn't even know if their lines were resistant. Sure, everyone knows about rust and powdery mildew and tan spot, but how many people know about bacterial infection? So once again we are going to be looking at a wheat harvest that has some very unusual pressures in place. Do not put an excessive amount of "faith" in the data from this year's yield only. Look at the long term, look at the last three years. 2137 looks pretty good this year because we haven't had a lot of rust. But last year it was hammered and next year it probably will be too. A three year average let's you know how it has done in a wet year and a dry year as well as taking into account all the things that might come along in any given year. And then spread your risk out by planting 2 or 3 or 4 different varieties - but no more than four, it gets too hard to keep things straight. This has been Ag Outlook 2007 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Putting Up Hay in Wet Weather

This is Ag Outlook 2007 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. Somebody was justifiably poking some fun at me the other day about some of my putting up hay comments. Seeing as how they aired in the middle of a period of a bunch of rain, I'm not surprised. But that always get's me to thinking about putting up hay in wet weather. Ya know, folks further east in this country make hay and they often have far rainier weather than we do - so how do they get it done? Well, for starters they probably don't get a foot of more of rain in the space of 3 or 4 weeks. But I think many of the hay producers "back east" tend to make more use of preservatives than we do. We feel that we are in a dry enough state that the hay should dry down on it's own. So what exactly to preservatives do? We know that if you put up hay a little wet it'll mold, it'll heat and it may catch fire. Preservatives kill many of the microbes that naturally occur in hay, so less heat is produced, giving hay time to dry naturally, without the "sweat." As it dries, the preservative vaporizes and disappears. If bales are stacked tightly into storage soon after baling, or producers fail to allow for natural drying, the remaining microbes eventually will produce mold and heat. The value of the preservative is lost. Also, if rain, high humidity or other sources moisten the hay later, microbial activity can redevelop because the protection from preservatives lasts only a short time. Preservatives can help make good hay at higher moisture levels, but correct management is needed to keep that hay in good condition. If you have more questions on using preservatives in hay, give me a call and we'll see what we can do about helping you make some hay! This has been Ag Outlook 2007 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

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